


Negative, Three

by Tsuukai



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4721045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsuukai/pseuds/Tsuukai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagami Taiga never met Himuro Tatsuya all those years ago and never became a basketball player. Instead, friendless, he finds his father’s camera, building his world one picture at a time. Tōō!Kagami.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative, Three

* * *

 

**Author’s Note:**

Ok, the names of the cameras I have used…well, I don’t know much about them besides what my friends speak about. I have asked two friends who are well-versed in photography and film, so the ones I’ve thrown in here are those. This author washes her hands off everything else that could account for inaccuracies.

Let’s pretend everything is as plausible as I make it seem :)

~~Like the out of character characters!!!~~

Please excuse any glaring…grammatical errors or spellings or whathaveyou. (You can mention it to me, though! Always happy to take corrections! XD)

 

* * *

 

 

He steps back away from the wall, fingers trailing the edge of the piece he had just forced into submission against the planar surface, he takes a deep breath. “That’s the last of it…” He stares at the final image he has physically created and tries to calm his thudding heart.

“Kagami, are you done yet?” Kagami Taiga, the bulkiest freshman in the photography club, glanced over his shoulder at the upperclassman popping their head into the room. “I have to return the key soon.”

“Yea, I’m done,” he starts to say, adding, “sir,” shortly. He blushes at the teasing grin he is given, turning back one last time at his display before collecting his items and school bag, plucking his camera bag last on the way out. Hesitating for the final time, Taiga quickly scans the collage he should have been working on for a month, but finished in mere fevered hours and then signs his fate by stepping completely out of the room. He does not watch as his _senpai_ shuts the door behind him, turning the key in the lock, the sound following him hollowly.

He begins his long journey home alone.

 

* * *

 

 

_One months ago…_

“Kagami!”

Hearing his name, Taiga turned around, a frown already settling on his face as he tried to look for the one who called him out, unintentionally scaring the people around him as his eyes narrowed in concentration. Unbeknownst, Taiga continues with his perusal, watching the straggling students of his year part ways as a male he recognises comes closer to him, waving a sheet in the air.

“Have you seen the Cultural Festival outline for our club this year?” The senpai enthused, and without waiting for Taiga to either agree or disagree, he was already pushing the paper into the redhead’s large hands and gushing. “At first I thought doing something so boring would kill me, but then the Prez thought about spicing it up by making us collage our work! This means I don’t have to find that one perfect picture out of all my perfect pictures!” The male sighed, dreamily and content, off in his own world. An amused smile painted Taiga’s lips even if he was irked at the other’s bragging.

“That’s nice,” he mumbled, non-committal. He glanced down at the now scrunched paper, reading the list of things he would have to prepare and submit to his Club President by the end of the week; before he could even think of starting on the so-called collage his senpai was probably already done with, if the starry eyes and the twisting dance he was doing was anything to go by. Ignoring the abnormal male, Taiga thanked him and went on his way.

“Where are you going?” He was asked.

Taiga stopped, looking back. “To my class.”

The senpai frowned, immediately going into serious mode. “But I didn’t even tell you what you’re meant to do.”

Glancing down at the paper in his hand, he brings it to chest level and points. “It says we have a choice of clubs to choose.”

A wicked gleam overtook the older boy’s eyes and Taiga straightened his hunching back reflexively. “That’s for us second years. You first years don’t really have a choice,” a large grin started to split the male’s face into two, eyes going into slits. If Taiga could, he would have snapped a picture and likened it to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. “Since you look scary enough, and have no manners whatsoever—” Taiga cringed, “—we’re giving you the Basketball club.”

Taiga grimaced; he has seen the Captain of the club from far away and if senpai was the Cheshire Cat, the Captain was something that the author of Alice would have loved being able to encapsulate into a character that tormented Alice at every turn she had to take, and probably increasing the rating of the novel’s genre. He had met Imayoshi Shōichi during the first week of school, milling around with the other clubs snatching at freshmen like cougars to meat. With his head ducked down, it was not a feat to bump into people, but Imayoshi- _senpai_ had grabbed onto his arm and asked him about joining the basketball club. At that time, scared at the confrontation, Taiga had jerked away and ran, not once looking behind (or else he would have seen the completely confused look on the elder’s face).

As it was, Taiga was wondering if this was fate’s way of getting back at him for being such a sissy in a big body, and if his photography senpai knew about this.

Despite being the tall, large person that he was, Taiga ducked his head as he walked, not meeting anyone’s eye and not staying long enough to find out what they wanted. He stuck to himself, weaving between the gaps he can map out amongst the students, eyes flicking to a face here and there, categorising which expression he knew and which he did not, and then which he would have liked to stop and ask the person’s permission to take a picture of said expression.

Taiga’s real world, however, did not work that way.

In the real world, Taiga is pushed to the sides of the hallway as more confident people walked the girth of the space, not even realising he exists. It would hardly matter to him, but as Taiga goes through the day, he finds it more and more difficult to stand straight and go on with his life. As it was, Taiga being the shy returnee creature that he was, had no friends even in high school where he had vowed to change his life. Not even a week of said establishment starting and he has already hidden his face behind the old Canon EOS, finding comfort in the tiny viewfinder. In there, Taiga did not have to ‘fit in’; being stuck outside the box was good and useful, unlike how society worked everywhere else.

 

* * *

 

Taiga rushes to club activities three times a week.

On days when there is no club, he walks around his neighbourhood, the bustling life of urban Sendagaya surrounding him from all sides, and all Taiga has to do is pick one point of the compass and he is already in a new world, capturing life in the two dimensional phase which was more alive in that precise second than the three dimension activity occurring. It was for that one second that Taiga yearned to capture with his hands, and the camera allowed him that power.

Days when he has club forces Taiga to sluggishly walk around the school, dropping by whichever club asked for help in either promoting their facilities or events or members. Most of the time his club helped out the school Newspaper, and while Taiga did not mind offering his time, he did not like when the author of the article he was helping out demanded the type of picture that was to be taken.  In the beginning he had asked the Club President to allow him to decline such requests, but just as sadistic as the second years were, the third year was worse.

“Why should I give you special treatment, returnee?” The elder had demanded. Unused to dealing with conflict, Taiga snapped his mouth closed, bowed and left. He did not want to fight in the only place he could exist freely on school grounds.

But the Cultural Festival brought on new peculiarities of discomfort to Taiga.

Though he had no qualms about the sports club—even the Basketball club that was apparently really strong in their part of Tokyo—he did not want to stalk the members until he found his muse for the collage. Taiga had already decided that instead of focusing on the whole team, finding one player to point out all the facets of basketball was better than doing a lacklustre job. His President would know Taiga took shortcuts and did only the bare minimal to get by.

Hefting his camera bag across his chest and the borrowed camera from the club (a sweet Canon 70D), Taiga proceeded his death march.

 

* * *

 

 

It took him more than fifteen minutes to find the right gymnasium, only because there were more than one for the Basketball club, and before he could even start, he had to meet up with the Captain. Who, as Taiga figured, would obviously be in the main gym. He was lucky that he had met the advisor and Head Coach of the team on his way, the surprisingly young in age male genially (with a straight face) directed him to where the team was currently at. Arriving at the court, however, Taiga was in for a shock.

“-I’m telling you to practice!” The loud roar echoed in the large gym, and out through the open door, rushing at Taiga with such velocity, he was surprised that he could stand after it.

His hands itched immediately, and a feeling he never lets pass, made him pull out the camera on instinct, bringing it up carefully and using the viewfinder as a scope to encase the two teenagers standing intimately near the stage.

The one who was being pulled at by his tank, the dark skinned male, spoke at a drawling level, too soft for him to hear, but even from where he stood, Taiga was shivering at the level of intent he could feel.

Suddenly, the blond teen holding him bent over the dark skinned male’s knee that he had driven so hard and sharp into the other’s stomach, effectively dislodging him away. Taiga’s finger on the shutter twitched, repeatedly, capturing each frame. Imayoshi- _senpai_ rushed forward, shouting out “Aomine!” and it was then that Taiga recognised the darker one.

“Practice, practice, don’t make me laugh!” Aomine Daiki, first year slacker in Taiga’s class, who sat so far away from him and hardly ever attended the lectures; he was not surprised it took him so long to realise who the other was. Aomine was bending down now, dropping the book he held in his hand, and was talking to another person, asking, “Ryō, how many points did I score last match?”

The teen named Ryō (Taiga easily recognised him as Sakurai) answered hesitantly, “ _Eto_ …82…I think.”

Taiga blinked, his finger paused. _What?_

Aomine rounded up a basketball, continuing with his speech. Taiga could not be concerned, snapping frame after frame of each movement Aomine made since it was the first time Taiga had ever seen someone apparently so lazy move so fluidly. As Aomine reached up to dunk the ball, however, a chilling sensation filled his heart, and just like the loud, ear-splitting tearing off the hoop, an expression so similar occurred in Taiga’s chest. The player glanced at the hoop in surprise of his own power, and Taiga quickly recorded that as well, capturing the beginning of knowledge, a sense of supremacy and maybe even self-fright, but Taiga pushes that out of his mind instantaneously; _how could someone like that fear his own abilities?_

Taiga breathed in to calm his racing heart. He had found the centre of his collage, right there.

“Bug me about practicing when you do it better than me!” Aomine declared, snide, throwing the hoop he just decimated over his shoulder like it was flint, and the hoop fell near the injured male still on the gym floor.

As Aomine sauntered closer, with his book in possession, an emotion Taiga had never felt before overtook him.

“Hah?” Aomine mangled out, dispassionately, glancing at him, “A spy wearing our uniform? Don’t joke.” He jerked against Taiga’s shoulder, cleanly throwing him off balance, and it took everything Taiga had to protect the camera as he fell on his rump.

Sitting on the floor, breathing fast, shallow, the emotion settled within his body to stay.

It was fear.

 

* * *

 

 

Taiga spends the next two weeks on his hands and knees, hiding in bushes and peeking around corners, feeling more like a creep than a member of the photography club. On one of his first badly planned stalking (because there is no other word for his furtive actions), he meets his crazy enthusiastic _senpai_ who gives him life-changing, eye-opening pointers; he never needed to know that the other male was very good at changing-room vantage points for _innocent exposures of the flesh_.

Whatever that meant.

Each day that he spends using up his silver halide film, is another night in his makeshift darkroom, safelight guiding his black-and-white fixing. Dark skin appears darker in these pictures, but Taiga revels in the smooth-looking texture that is displayed on the glossy surface of his paper. Sometimes, when he wants to see a little more life, a little more of the grumpy boy, Taiga exposes the print process with some light, making haphazard prints. He grins toothily at the results, keeping the dried pieces of his work in a protective album, never to see the light of day again.

There are some days that he takes the digital camera, uploading coloured splashes of blue, black and red, the orange of the basketball, the squeaky-clean gymnasium floors, and there is some kind of excitement pulsing through his veins as he selects and edits, manipulates the light in some, sharpens the tones in others, and Taiga cannot stop grinning as he watches his printer slowly print those boy’s images. As they sit in his hands, trembling, Taiga does not know what to do anymore with his self.

What Taiga currently does then, however, made more of a difference in his life because just three days later, as if smacked by karmic revelation, Aomine had figured out that they were classmates. And the disgusted face the boy made (Taiga quickly snapped a picture of it) sent him sprawling literally into the desks near the window, uprooting them from their restrained order. Those classmates of whose names Taiga never remembers, lingered just at the edge of his peripheral vision, afraid to step into the wide berth they were giving the pissed off Aomine.

“You really are a creep,” Aomine spat, shoulders hunched, eyes glaring holes into his soft flesh, “Following me every fucking second of the day. You almost followed me into the toilet, you fucker!” Taiga almost whimpered if he could vocalise the sounds—that was how scared he was. But then Sakurai was there, doing his _gomen nasai_ posturing, and Aomine merely tut-tutted. What should have been gripping him with fear and abject misery was an uneasy feeling started blooming in the pit of his stomach. Chalking it up to being hungry (it was lunch time), Taiga ducked his head away from Aomine’s unrepentant stare. “God, my mood’s completely ruin. Hey Ryō, how come we have such a filthy creature in our midst? The atmosphere—” As Aomine kept walking out, talking and forcing Sakurai to follow, each heard word was like a knife to Taiga’s fragile skin.

“Are you okay, Kagami-kun?” A nameless classmate came up to him, holding out a hand to help pull him up. Taiga held back his grimace, shook his head and slowly got up, cradling his camera.

“Aomine-kun is a real brute. Try not to get in his way, okay?”

Taiga watched the doorway of their class for a few more seconds before absently nodding to well-meaning words; not like he could keep his eyes from always following after the apparent brute. Not like he could stop his thumb from aching to push the shutter off, and index finger cramping in order to take numerous pictures.

It seemed, even if he did not want to, his body was already revolting against his brain.

 

* * *

 

 

Prez gives him the standard amount of space the other three first years get, and as he gazes down at the pitiful 30 by 45 feet cork expanse, Taiga mulls over how he is to fit nearly a thousand of Aomine’s faces and poses and features and hidden sights on this little stretch of canvas. He glances over his shoulder at the second years’ area, three times the amount, and then finally at the only third year—Prez’s—full wall. The club leader is studiously ignoring the rants from the second years, pushing out the last of his presence onto the wall, three years of frustration and brilliance, all spilling out on the surface.

Taiga stares back at his meagre amount.

Aomine’s brilliance, unfortunately, cannot be contained by this space.

 

* * *

 

 

It was probably the third time Aomine interacts with Taiga, the grimace on his face digging deep into him, making him feel unworthy of the direct attention, wanting to crawl into a hole and cover himself up with dirt, that Taiga sees something different in Aomine’s approach.

With narrowed eyes, he questions—not a very smart stance—if Aomine was injured.

Narrowed, hateful blue eyes stare straight at him, and with a decisive blow, Aomine snarls, “What’s it to you?” Thinking that Taiga would never scrounge up the nerve to reply, when he does, both of them are left speechless:

“But…what about your plays?”

Aomine looks about to smack him again (resorting to his occasional violent streak), but halts, a pained look filling his eyes and with enormous effort, swivels awkwardly on the heel of one foot and saunters stiffly away from Taiga, a clenched fist held tightly near his thigh.

What Taiga does not know is the look Aomine saw on him; the look of a cornered child, unable to fend for himself.

 

* * *

 

 

Taiga is caught, two days before the deadline, not having done anything on his section in the club room, and is therefore hustled and coddled and prodded for his work. He confesses of his plight: too much material to work with, studiously leaving out the _not enough space to showcase it_.

Prez looks down his nose at Taiga either way, but diplomatically ignores the unsaid words. Taiga blushes, ducking his head, and turns to glance outside the club room. It is still during class hours, and while his own class had a free study period to work on the fair, Taiga was not helping his class, preferring to shelter himself in the normally-vacant-at-this-time club room.

“You have to finish it sooner rather than later, Kagami,” Prez says, exasperated, rubbing two fingers into his nose bridge. Taiga does not blame him; he gets flustered with himself too. “Since you’re free now, stay here and do something. _Anything_.” Prez almost had the _I don’t care what it is you do, just fill up that ugly empty space enough that Imayoshi doesn’t fucking annoy the shit out of my peacefully ending high school life._

Taiga nods, petulant, and watches Prez stomp out, running away from the embarrassing display of his own work behind them, stretching from one corner of the room to the other, from the ceiling to the floor. Aesthetically, the collage Prez did was pleasing, but Taiga knew of something else that would have looked much better there.

He slams his head on the empty space he is to use, temples throbbing duller than his forehead was at the moment, and he has to concentrate on his indoor shoes and how they do not fit in the small tiles of the floor in order to get his breathing rate down.

He thinks he miscalculated; watching Aomine had become more than just about archiving the beautiful non-planar lines of his muscle. Had become more than the flex and taut, and the push and pull, and the trails of sweat glistening in the artificial light of the gymnasium Aomine sometimes played hooky in. The cold stare, the long eyelashes, the proud nose, the haughty twist of his mouth. The excited sparkle in his eyes when he stuffs mouthfuls of Sakurai’s cute handmade lunches, the glower in his face when Momoi was leered upon. The rise of his eyebrows, the ugly furrows on his forehead, the haphazardly cut hair, the tilt of his frowning lips.

His blue eyes.

His large hands with long fingers.

Lean torso hidden beneath the ill-fitting uniform.

Skin so dark it was difficult not to want to caress, to see if it was real.

And every little detail Taiga wants to capture onto his film and old camera, he wonders if his love for photography has transferred to his muse.

 

* * *

 

 

Taiga put one measly four-by-four caption of Aomine dead centre of his cork space, idly trailing his fingertip around the edges of the digital image he had printed for this sole purpose. His other pictures of better quality—ones that Taiga could not show anyone but his own twisted, lonely mind—were nowhere near school or the club. Instead, there is a pile of pictures and prints and exposures he does not mind being tacked unusually in the club room for random strangers to ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ at Aomine Daiki.

It is here he violently shakes the thoughts of possessing someone who hates him so strongly out of his mind, altogether missing the arrival of said object of his thoughts.

With wide eyes, Taiga flitters about his space, wondering how to cover up what he was doing, preparing for his body and fragile ego to be smashed into the corkboard, or maybe into the pile of cardboard boxes on the side, or even the cluster of desks in the middle of the room. Aomine silently walks around, bored eyes moving from one image to the next, not meeting Taiga who wonders if Aomine knows about how his closet back home is filled more with negatives of his candid pictures than clothes Taiga can wear for a casual outing.

Before Aomine can attack him—with anything, Taiga fears—he says, “I, er, I’m sorry, for taking pictures without your permission,” because that is what it comes down to, Taiga violating Aomine’s personal space and his whatever all because of an event that Aomine hardly cared for. In fact, privately, Taiga mused on the things that really mattered dearly to the other male. Even those gravure magazines he gushed about, Taiga has seen him smack them aimlessly and worthlessly on the floor with his feet, uncaring of dirt-smudged covers or torn pages. He glances over his shoulder at the moment, though, and his eyes widen, arm raised in a mockery of wanting to hold onto Aomine. Aomine, whom with equally wide eyes, is staring at the images Taiga thinks are lackadaisical and not worthy of showcasing Aomine’s true value, his true magnificence. The colours feel too bright, too boorish, too—but Aomine is still unable to take his eyes away from them.

It takes Taiga a moment to realise he has held his breath, confused on what his next action should be.

“I don’t care anymore,” Aomine sluggishly answered, his voice forcefully passing the border of being bored, shoulders hunched as he turns away from the vivid collage Taiga was building. Taiga watches him, the need to stop him vehemently fleeting as his outstretched hand drops at its own violation. “So what if you take good pictures? That’s not going to help me, now is it?”

The words are a sucker punch, a pulsing pain spreading from the centre of his chest all the way to his head, making it heavy, dull.

“What I want is a rival. Someone I can push myself on the court with and think, ‘ _Ah, I don’t know which one of us is better_ ’.” Aomine pauses, suddenly coming to a full stop. Each word he speaks is foreign to Taiga, only because he does not know where Aomine is going with this almost-monologue he has started. “I’ve not thought like that in ages. I don’t even know what a rival is supposed to be. If you can’t help,” here he glances over his shoulder, and glaring fiercely, growls out, “ _stay out of my way_.”

Taiga cannot move even if he wants to, held in place by piercing blue eyes. As Aomine moved out of the club room and further along the hallway, Taiga resumed functioning, his hand coming up to cover his dry mouth. There is no turning back now, Aomine’s words being too little too late in the grand scheme of things.

Glancing at the images he does not really like, Taiga tears it down, panting and huffing in exertion, watching as bits and pieces flutter to the floor like a soft shower of colourful petals.

There is nothing Taiga wants to do more than to put the best of Aomine out, even if the other could not tolerate him, could not accept what he had seen through Taiga’s pictures, could not process the warm feelings Taiga really had no place to hold for Aomine.

But he has it, and he is selfishly keeping it safe, thought he is going to proclaim his stance in the only way Taiga knows how to.

 

* * *

 

 

He hardly has moments when he is alone with the girl, but Momoi is eerie to be around for Taiga. In fact, he is profoundly taking notes of who has walked in and who has walked out, keeping census for their pre-showcasing, that Taiga almost misses the slight gasp he hears. Though it is difficult to miss it because only she is in the room with him, and her pink hair is a beacon at the corner of his eye, standing so close to his collage, staring argus-eyed at each piece that made up the whole. Taiga still cannot bring himself to look at his own finished extensive photomontage of Aomine Daiki in all his glory: sad, exhausted, glorious, magnificent, hurt, injured, pensive, loved, cared for, feared, admired… Taiga still cannot name half the little details that morph one expression into another, so he keeps them nameless, the montage shaped into one of Aomine’s superb formless shots.

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” Momoi murmurs, glancing his way. Taiga’s eyes dry up as they widen to impossible widths. “But I don’t think you need so many for this, do you, Kagamin?”

Taiga’s mouth does not work in time; Momoi is already out of the club room, traipsing herself merrily. He thinks that would be the end of his weird moments, but the girl actually drags an unwilling Aomine into the room, squabbling like little children, before—with a timely exasperated pout—Momoi demands Aomine to appreciate the thought, slamming the door in front of her shut. Both Taiga and Aomine stare at her through the little glass window, and she smirks, twiddles her fingers in a jolly wave and turns around.

“What the hell,” Aomine mumbles, rubbing his nape and the little hairs standing at attention over there. Even from where he is sitting, Taiga can see how stiff each muscle was and how uncomfortable Aomine stood, though indiscernible by the untrained eye. Taiga, over the course of the month, was vastly trained in the ways of Aomine’s subtle motions.

Like how blue eyes are larger than he has ever seen them, behind the camera’s viewfinder or not, since the dark skinned teenager was actually staring wide-eyed at him.

It takes what feels like eons passing through the eye of a needle, painful and slow, before Taiga shakily gets to his feet, walking around the table he was occupying. Aomine watches his every move, making none of his self. Taiga licks his lips, once, twice, and clears his mouth of spittle gathering unnecessarily in the cavity.

“Momoi,” Taiga nearly croaked out, “Just mentioned about how…a picture…was worth,” he needed to breathe through his mouth, his nasal cavity failing him, “A thousand words.” Those blue eyes tracked him carefully. Taiga paused, looking at his collage so briefly that his eyeballs could have suffered from a major whiplash. “But mine really only says three.”

Taiga is already moving away now, saying his peace and wanting to disappear quickly before he is caught and demanded an answer—not that he thinks Aomine would try to accost one out of him. Yet. There were only three words he could say at this point to the other male, and he is sure that Aomine did not want to hear that from him.

A strong grip on his elbow jerks him to a swivelling stop, heart thudding in his chest without needing to have run a marathon, and Taiga is bracing himself for the punch that is coming.

Only it does not.

Instead, peeking through dark eyelashes, he sees a confused expression on Aomine’s face, a look he has so many copies of in his room, serialised and dated to be viewed later, over and over again. Aomine rarely looks confused because he rarely interacts with people he deems worthy, so Taiga knows that this look is more precious than his smiling face. Instantly he feels like a creep for thinking along those lines, but Taiga clamps down on those surging feelings because Aomine is now moving his mouth to speak.

“Those words…” Aomine murmurs, gripping Taiga’s elbow tighter, “Are you not going to say them?”

Taiga’s breath staggers out of his lungs, not knowing if he wanted to stop breathing or pant with exertion. His brain is in overdrive, wondering what the right course of action he should take would be, and Aomine’s expression—something he has never captured before, and his hands are already itching for his camera, even his phone would do now—was not helping his decision-making.

“Hey,” Aomine calls for his attention, as though knowing Taiga was already escaping the here-and-now mentally. “Are you not going to?”

If Taiga was paying attention, he would have heard the rapid thudding of a heart against a ribcage, he would have noticed the beads of cold sweat padding the edge of his hairline, noticed the sallow coloured expression Aomine wore. But Taiga was not paying attention to Aomine because his head was bowed low to his chest, watching his feet fail to remain steady, knees shaking. He felt miserable and being stuck in a closed room with Aomine was not making it feel any better.

Aomine goes to open his mouth, goes to question Taiga (he guesses), but Taiga does not let him. Instead, playing out a feat he thought impossible, Taiga snags his arm away, clutches it to his heaving chest, and dashes towards the door. He would have safely managed to escape granted Aomine had let him.

However, for some absurd reason that Taiga cannot even fathom, Aomine was slamming his hand against the door near his head, bracketing Taiga from either side. Through the muted reflection from the door’s little window, Taiga looks like a trapped jungle animal, Aomine’s expression carefully hidden behind his head.

“You’ve been heedlessly following me around, clicking pictures of me without asking—” “You said you didn’t mind in the end!” “—and now you can’t even tell me why you were doing?! C’mon!”

Taiga’s mouth dropped open, possibly a very unappealing sight, but he did not care for that at the moment. “It was for the fair, okay!” His voice came out as a squeak against his will, manly undertones lost in translation.

Aomine pressed in from behind. “If they are only three words,” he almost whispers into Taiga’s nape, making him shiver unnecessarily, “then just let it out already.”

Taiga licks his lips, mouth already dried up, he wonders if that was what having a cat’s tongue would feel like. It takes so long for him to come to terms with the situation, that he does not recognise his own voice as it asks, “Why do you want to know?” The hand near his head curled into a fist. “You’re just going to beat me up for saying it.”

“Just say it,” Aomine demands.

“N-No.”

The sound of disproval by way of clicking with a quick tongue, and Taiga has to find inner strength to hold himself steady, to hold himself up. “Why are you being so stubborn?”

Taiga wondered _how_ he was being so stubborn.

“…You…” Aomine was speaking, mostly to Taiga’s nape, soft puffs of air on the exposed skin, giving him undue goose bumps, “…might be surprised.”

Taiga frowned. “…With what?”

“With my answer,” Aomine huffed. He shifted closer again.

Taiga snapped his eyes back to the reflection, moving his head to the side, and whatever breath, blood, emotion remained in his body froze; he does not recognise that look on Aomine’s face. Countless negatives Taiga has collected, and even if he sat down in his closet where he was hoarding said negatives, Taiga is sure to not find any expression close to the one Aomine sports now.

So Taiga closes his eyes, dives deep into the recesses of his safe place within him, and softly whispers, “I won’t say I like you, Aomine-kun,” and the almost harsh and unexpected embrace he receives is so not expected that Taiga almost screeches in fright and confusion.

“I still don’t get it,” Aomine says close to his ear, calming Taiga down enough to listen carefully to each and every uttered syllable. “I still don’t get why you not saying you like me bothers me, but…but it’s not so bad, been seen by your camera lens.”

Aeons seem to pass, and after the hundred thousandth inhales and exhales, does Taiga chuckle, leaning closer to the door. Aomine follows, not allowing any space to form between them, and the motion is so alien to him, and he cannot really comprehend it. So Taiga ignores it for educating the other boy, softly rebuking him with, “It’s called a viewfinder, _ba-ka_ ,” though he really could not care for the specifics. He is sure that his camera would not care if he was really capturing Aomine through the viewfinder, but he knows it would get the perfect shot of him regardless.

After all the negatives piling up in Taiga’s closet, he is sure he can add to them some out-of-focus, smiling Aomine Daiki’s in them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Author’s Note:** Urgh, this took forever, almost a year in the making (I did most of it on the 12 th of August, 2014) x____x. Being so out of character makes dealing with it so difficult. I’m still having my usual issues (not enough plot, why does Aomine suddenly like Kagami if he is being such an ass, and what was I thinking even starting something like this?? I’m just thanking God I wasn’t going into the whole ‘Kagami can be potentially bullied here’—first world problems, I tell you), and I’m not completely satisfied with this piece. So…some…feedback…would be much appreciated… Sorry…for asking…so much…from you…

 

**_Named characters belong to Tadatoshi Fujimaki-sensei!_** Sub-par old plot, most unnamed characters, and writing belong to me!

 


End file.
